The Threat to Freedom

...Thus, he became the perfect spokesman and leader for tired Americans who want to indulge their fears and hates at a cheap price, who want to defeat Communism and pay lower taxes at the same time...

...He contributed nothing to the conviction of Alger Hiss, and his subsequent efforts have as yet turned up no very important subversives otherwise unknown...

...McCarthy still leads the parade...

...To this writing, he has never employed his denunciatory power in full-dress explanation of and attack on the imperial Communism of Moscow and Peking...

...That is the lie which identifies Communism with democratic socialism and the welfare state, the lie that affirms that liberty is bound up with the right of private owners of the nation's mineral wealth and water power to exploit them for private profit...

...State committees, notably the "little Dies" or Tenney Committee in California, were worse than their Federal models...

...Our jails are not filled with dissenters...

...Norman Thomas needs no introduction to readers of The New Leaded, who know well his long career of fighting for freedom and social justice both at home and on the international front...

...I have raised questions of his sixth-column service to the Kremlin in two open letters to the Senator, to which he has not replied...

...It took him almost two years to discover gold in them thar hills of anti-Communism...

...In his role of Grand Inquisitor, Senator McCarthy examined James Wechsler, acknowledged ex-Communist but now Communism's able foe as editor of the New York Post...

...That is a description of the McCarthyism which menaces our liberties...

...Certain it is that, by collusion or coincidence, he is following the course a philosophic Communist might have chosen for him: noisy, indiscriminate criticism of Communism combined with wholesale denunciation of "secret Communists" in Government, most of whom he cannot identify...

...Partly, of course, because of McCarthy's skill as a demagogue...

...So his colleagues thought it safer to ignore the very serious questions about his own financial transactions which a Senate subcommittee had raised, questions which our Grand Inquisitor of others contemptuously refused to answer...

...The Threat to Freedom Senator McCarthy is strengthening the forces he claims to oppose by destroying the people's faith in their own government, and confusing true Communists with decent dissenters By Norman Thomas It has been the fortune of Senator Joseph McCarthy to give his name to the complex of attitudes, procedures and laws with which America most volubly confronts Communism within her borders...

...It would be premature to say that McCarthyism has conquered our courts and our country...

...Most of the elements of McCarthyism long antedate the Senator's emergence to prominence...

...partly because he came along at the right time in a country somewhat disappointed in the consequences of its own attempts at international virtue, shocked by the worldwide impact of Communist imperialism, and outraged by Communist abuse of its trust in Stalin as an ally...

...On a less self-interested plane, this patriotism identifies love of country with dislike of foreigners, love of conformity, and exaggerated suspicion of dissent...

...As a matter of fact, much as some of our laws and loyalty procedures may need criticism and repeal or amendment, the worst feature of McCarthyism is the popular fear and suspicion which it expresses and increases...

...Fortunately, public opinion ran against the vigilantes in Norwalk and to some extent in their own organization...

...For untoward events in the struggle against imperial Communism it would appear that there is always some American or Briton to blame, always a simple formula for victory: Drive the Red rascals out of Washington...

...Robert Morris, chief counsel for the McCarran, later the Jenner, Committee, deserves much of the credit for these improvements which, however, began after the departure of Martin Dies, a Democrat, and his successor, J. Parnell Thomas, Republican and later convicted lawbreaker, from leadership of the House Committee on Un-American Activities...

...The article on these pages is based on a chapter in the book called "McCarthyism and Liberty...

...His methods of publicity made the newspapers unwittingly and stupidly build him up...

...In the meantime, his chief interest had been advantage to his own fortunes in his relations with the real-estate lobby and certain housing interests...

...Thomas's analysis carries added weight...

...Wechsler's conversion and suggested to him that some Russian commissar had told him to feign his present role the better to serve the cause...

...The objects of his wrath have been General George Marshall, former Secretary of State Dean Ache-son, British leaders Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, and Democratic Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson...

...he is credited with important help in the campaigns of eight of his colleagues...

...As a Republican, in his campaign against Robert M. La Follette Jr...

...Not even the inquisitorial methods of McCarthyism were originated by the Senator...

...The Grand Inquisitor profited by a falsehood that he did not invent and which others propagandize at great cost...

...McCarthy doubted Mr...

...The last named, he said, he might turn into a "good American" with a baseball bator was it a slippery elm club...

...At a time when rabble-rousing has reached unprecedented proportions, Mr...

...I believe that that community is already in process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where non-conformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection...

...He has been the demagogic opportunist, not the bigoted anti-Communist fanatic...

...Under our present tax laws, we taxpayers bear most of the cost of our indoctrination in this falsehood, since great corporations deduct it as an advertising expense before paying their taxes...

...One of the worst of McCarthy's disservices to his country and freedom is the general impression that he has created (to some extent at home and to a greater extent abroad) that his spirit controls our judicial and administrative machinery...

...where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence...

...where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent...

...Such success is unfortunately impressive...

...This sobering conclusion is supported not only by his electoral success but by the results of a civil-liberties poll conducted by the National Opinion Research Council during May 1952...

...Similar questions in 1946 had brought disquieting answers, but intolerance had grown...

...Next week, we will present an article by Sidney Hook, "The Tactics of Controversy," which will carry the discussion further...

...Specimens of it were to be found in certain resolutions of the American Legion and the even more prejudiced utterances of the Daughters of the American Revolution years before Joe McCarthy terrorized his fellow Senators and Republican associates by his identification of patriotism with respect for his fulminations...

...Thomas describes the pressure being placed on American liberty by the Soviet conspiracy and by domestic vigilantes...

...Thomas has written a new book, The Threat to Freedom, which has just been published by the Norton Company...

...The Senator should have realized how completely that assumption might be turned against him...

...I have, therefore, asked Attorney General Brownell to speak out for liberty and clarify the situation so far without appreciable result...

...He opposed his own party's President on the choice of Ambassador to Russia...

...for the Republican Senatorial nomination back in 1946, McCarthy cheerfully accepted support from workers under Communist leadership and influence in Wisconsin's open primary...

...It must be confessed that, in some of these matters, the Eisenhower Administration, despite the President's good intentions, has at times seemingly tried to prove McCarthy unnecessary by out-McCarthying himbut in vain...

...But the revelation of what was happening in Norwalk made probable rumors of like spying on neighbors and censoring of books and speakers by secret or semi-secret vigilantes in many other communities...

...Nevertheless, McCarthy has made himself in the public mind, here and abroad, the symbol of militant opposition to insidious disloyalty...

...The patriotism which is "the last refuge of a scoundrel" is a perversion of love of country for personal advantage far older than the crusty British Tory, Samuel Johnson, to whom we owe the definition...

...In the investigation of allegedly "un-American" activities, Martin Dies set the pattern as chairman of the House committee, first established in 1938...

...Now he roams the country describing twenty momentous years in American history as "twenty years of treason...

...By the outrageous seniority system, he became chairman of a permanent investigating committee...

...It is significant of the man, of the "ism," and perhaps of the mind of the Lonely Crowd, that McCarthy by no means began his public career as a conservative or an anti-Communist...

...As for legislation and administrative procedures directed at the discovery and punishment of disloyalty, McCarthy had nothing to do with the passage of the Smith Act in 1940, and little to do with the McCarran Act of 1950...

...He has largely recovered from his failure to take leadership in foreign policy (on the matter of China trade) away from the President...

...Thus Joseph McCarthy qualifies as chief inspirer and symbol of the false Americanism which led Judge Learned Hand to say: "Risk for risk, for myself I had rather take my chance that some traitors will escape detection than spread abroad a spirit of general suspicion and distrust, which accepts rumor and gossip in place of undismayed and unintimidated inquiry...

...In searching out that evil, he above all others is the Grand Inquisitor, he above all others the exponent of government by denunciation...

...Originally, he was a Democrat...

...In this book, Mr...

...The California inquisitor, Jack Tenney, had done his worst and passed over to open support of Gerald L. K. Smith, anti-Semitism and all, before McCarthy took command in Washington...

...speech is still free to heretics who dare claim their freedom...

...It is an even more serious error to credit him with the major measures taken by the Federal Government against subversion...

...But the Velde and McCarthy committees frequently revert to the worst of former practices...

...As a matter of fact, the investigatory procedures of most Congressional committees are today somewhat fairer or less unfair to the individual than under Dies...

...He had not begun his personal crusade against Communism when President Truman instituted loyalty examinations for Federal employes in 1947...

...Some of these misguided Americans actually believe that they are complying as patriots with Government requests for aid...

...consider, for example, his $10,000 fee from the Lustron Corporation...

...15 per cent would allow no criticism of "Government, Constitution, American way...

...where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists, to win or lose...

...The Senator successfully exploited anti-Communism as a campaign issue...

...It would be contrary to fact to hold the Senator solely responsible for what is known as McCarthyism...

...there are many heartening evidences to the contrary...

...Liberals who passionately denounce them showed no equivalent concern for individual rights when New Dealers controlled the machinery of Congressional inquiry...

...Of this popular McCarthyism, the discovery that the Veterans of Foreign Wars maintained a secret snooping committee to spy on the loyalty of their fellow citizens in Norwalk, Connecticut, is the most recent example...

...55 per cent think it more important "to find out all the Communists in the country even if some innocent people are accused" than to protect the innocent...

...Here Senator McCarran has probably played a more significant role...

...Now Mr...

...Thus, he conditions his followers for a fascist type of anti-Communism, makes our Jeffersonian tradition contemptible, destroys the people's faith in their own government, and gives the Communists respectability by confusing them with decent dissenters...

...The worst evil in America is local censorship by voluntary vigilantes in libraries and schools and the cowardice and apathy of the public before it...

...Thus, only 45 per cent believed that the Socialist party should be allowed to publish newspapers in this country...

...His only concession to decency was some abatement of dictatorial power over his own committee in order to get Democrats back on it...

...Why, then, "McCarthyism" and the general acceptance of the Senator as symbol of an anti-Communism which is rather the universal suspicion of dissent...

...He got his big appropriation from the Senate without strings by a vote of 85 to 1. He has been put on the Rules Committee...